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A look ahead at the new season

The worlds biggest and best support series will again kick off next week as the GP2 series begins in Catalunya home of Formula Ones Spanish Grand Prix for the first of ten rounds ending with the race at Monza home of the Italian Grand Prix in September.

The last three GP2 Champions have walked straight into Formula One drives the following season so the race to follow in the footsteps of Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton and Timo Glock will be hotly contested throughout the ten rounds and nineteen races.

As the reigning champions iSport start as favourites and have signed two drivers with GP2 experience. Durango’s Karun Chandhok and Arden’s Bruno Senna arrive after strong seasons in 2007 both taking a win and finishing fourteenth and eighth respectively in the championship.

They also raced together for iSport in the GP2 Asia championship held over the winter giving them the advantage of consistency over rivals ART. In the Asian championship Chandhok was thirteenth and Senna was fifth.

Double former champions ART are the next team and in my opinion have the best team of drivers on the grid this year. Luca Fillippi brings a season experience from Super Nova in which he ended the championship third. He will be partnered by GP2 newcomer Romain Grosjean.

Grosjean is the reigning Formula Three Euroseries champion and was picked on the 2007 “Stars of Tomorrow” list. He is also the Renault F1 test driver and finished as champion in this winters GP2 Asia series. Fillippi also drove in the Asian series but he was driving for Meritus Racing and finished seventeenth.

Last seasons third places team was Campos, this year they retain the services of Vitaly Petrov who was thirteenth in the championship last year, his new team-mate replacing Giorgio Pantano is 2007 World Series by Renault runner up Ben Hanley. Petrov raced in the Asian series finishing third and Hanley race in four rounds finishing fifteenth.

Super Nova had an impressive season in 2007 and hope to improve on it with a driver line-up consisting of World Series by Renault Champion Alvaro Parente and Christian Bakkerud who joins the team from DPR after ending 2007 without a point. He also drove for the team in the Asian series finishing without a point.

DAMS have an all new line-up, not only are both drivers new to the team but they are also new to GP2. Kamui Kobayashi was fourth in the Formula Three Euroseries last year and he is joined by International Formula Masters Champion Jerome D'Ambrosio. Both drivers also competed in the GP2 Asia series for DAMS finishing sixth and eleventh respectively.

Racing Engineering have retained the services of Javier Villa who finished sixth for the team in 2007 after taking three wins. He is joined by the much travelled former Formula One driver Giorgio Pantano. Pantano finished fifth in 2007 for the Campos team.

Arden had a very disappointing year in 2007 despite big name drivers. This year they have brought 2007 “Stars of Tomorrow” driver Sebastien Buemi who raced a part season for ART ending in twenty-first place and Euroseries Formula Three racer Yelmer Buurman who finished 2007 in sixth place. Buemi raced in the Asian series finishing second with Buurman finishing tenth after four rounds

Durango ended last year in great form taking a race win at Spa. Alberto Valerio moves up following his eighth place in British Formula Three to join Davide Valsecchi who was sixteenth in World Series by Renault in 2007. They were team-mates in the Asian series with Valerio finishing nineteenth and Valsecchi in eighth.

FMS have signed Spyker test driver Adrian Valles giving him another shot in GP2 following and unsuccessful 2005. His team-mate is Roldan Rodriguez who drove for Minardi Piquet Sports in 2007 finishing seventeenth. Both drivers competed in the GP2 Asia series, Valles finished seventh for FMS and Rodriguez drove one race for the team replacing the injured Michael Herek.

Trident has signed Mike Conway and Ho-Pin Tung for their 2007 challenge. Conway’s time at Super Nova in 2007 was filled by disappointment and bad luck ending with fourteenth in the championship while Tung was twenty-third in GP2 last year driving for BCN. Tung also competed in the Asian series for Trident finishing in twenty-first place

Minardi Piquet Sports had a spectacular fall from grace, in 2006 driver Nelson Piquet Junior took them to second but without him they fell down to eleventh. In 2008 their drivers consist of Andres Zuber moving from champions iSport after finishing ninth in 2007 and Pastor Maldonado who joins from Trident after finishing 2007 in tenth, despite missing the final four rounds due to injury.

DPR showed signs of potential towards the end of 2007 and hope to build on it in 2008 with drivers Diego Nunes who finished second in the 2007 Formula 3000 Euroseries and Michael Herck who moves from the Formula Three Euroseries despite not scoring a single point in 2007.

Nunes drove for Campos and DPR in the Asian series finishing twentieth and Herck drove for FMS ending without points in four rounds. Herek is currently injured following a crash in a GP2 Asia race, his replacement will be World Series by Renault driver Giacomo Ricci.

BCN were the bottom team in 2007. They attempt to rebuild in 2008 with Paolo Maria Nocera the Italian Formula Three Champion joining the team. His team-mate is Milos Pavlovic who was third in the World Series by Renault in 2007 and sixteenth in the Asian series for the team

2008 is looking like it is going to be the best in the short history of GP2. Four drivers have a very real chance of becoming champion, the problem is only one of them can.

The team’s battle will be another year of iSport Vs ART. These two teams are by far the most competitive teams in GP2; both have an amazing set of young drivers who have a huge future ahead of them in the world of Motorsport.

I feel the teams championship will go to iSport, for the Asian series ART had Stephen Jelley in the team rather than Fillippi and this battle is going to be so close I think that the consistency that iSport have with its Asian team and Regular team is what will swing it there way.

It is going to be very difficult to predict a champion but as the junior formulae “expert” of UpdateF1 I have to put my neck on the line and make one.

Both iSport and ART have one driver I rate highly and another I rate very highly. I feel the drivers I rate very highly will be fighting for the title with the drivers I rate highly fighting over third. To break that down; in the drivers championship battle it will be Grosjean Vs Senna for the championship and Fillippi Vs Chandhok over third. Both battles will be very close and fought in close quarters with each other.

There is no doubt that all four men will take multiple wins, but simply because of his year experience in GP2 I will give Senna the edge over Grosjean and predict that he will take the title but he will be no more than two or three points clear of Grosjean.

Behind Chandhok and Fillippi will be intriguing and I would not like to put any money on either driver to finish ahead of the other but as I have to I feel Fillippi is the better driver and he earns my selection for third in the championship with Vitaly Petrov just a few points back in fifth.

So to sum up; the drivers championship will be Senna as champion, Grosjean in second, Fillippi third and Chandhok fourth, with iSport taking the Teams Championship.

Written: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:26:55